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-   -   2014 Honda City | My Diesel Rockstar Arrives | EDIT: 10 years completed and running strong (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-term-ownership-reviews/147992-2014-honda-city-my-diesel-rockstar-arrives-edit-10-years-completed-running-strong-4.html)

Last Week i checked with Hot Tracks for Maxpider and they did not have stock. Expected wait period is 15 days and they quoted 7.5k which is on the higher side. I visited Torque, Indiranagar. Since 2014 City is not launched in some global markets, they mentioned it will take quite some time for the mats to arrive. 1 -1.5 months wait period.

Tekton Tyre Pressure Gauge looks cool. Will add this to my list

Checked the other key and yes that has the Chrome on it. So, I guess I am using the spare key as my primary.

Thanks for the tip. As of now the new tyres are holding the air well and I guess checking once in 3 weeks will suffice.

7.5K is expensive, I read on another thread where someone got the 3D Maxspyder for the Honda Civic at 5.5K or so. Maybe its good to wait till they are available in multiple places.



More Fuel Efficiency Updates

Also to add some more Fuel Efficiency Updates. The uphill drive up Nandi Hills with 4 passengers lowered the FE to 16 kmpl. Then I drove on the same Highway (NH7, Bangalore-Hyderabad Highway) all the way to Lepakshi in AP and drove back. The road was ideal for use of Cruise Control and used it effectively to maintain constant speed of 90 kmph. With the same 4 people onboard and drive on the near straightline highway in Cruise Control mode most of the time, the FE increased to about 24 kmpl!:thumbs up

Deconding the VIN on Honda Cars

OK, Today I will cover the Decoding of VIN number on Honda Cars based on the following article on Team-BHP: URL, Page 04 of that article is dedicated to Honda Cars.

As per the Article, Honda Cars will have a 17 character VIN Number. Out of the 17 characters the 9th and 10th characters are the ones of interest to detect the Month and Year of manufacture of the car.

Since I did a visit to the car in the yard in Jan and launch of the 2014 Honda City itself was in Jan, I did not find it crucial for checking the Month and Year of Manufacturing. Since I had sometime today, I decided to go thru this as more of an academic exercise and self-learning to figure out the VIN on my 2014 Honda City.

I went to my car and noted down the VIN number which was printed on a sticker on the Rear Door Window on the Right Hand Side (Window Behind the Steering Wheel). Below is a shot of the same:


Sticker with VIN Number (Last 3 Digits Marked out in White)

Now, the next step is to note down the 9th and 10th digit in order to identify the Month and Year of Manufacture of the Car.


Characters with Numbering shown below

Now, based on the analysis the following are the characters for each of these:
9th Character : A
10th Character : E

Now lets decode this based on the data provided by the Team-BHP Thread:

The Table to use for decoding the 9th Character of "A" is below:
A = JAN
B = FEB
C = MAR
D = APR
E = MAY
F = JUN
G = JUL
H = AUG
J = SEP
K = OCT
L = NOV
M = DEC

From this we can decode that the Month of Manufacture is JAN :D

The table to be used for decoding the Year of Manufacture of "E" is as below:

A = 2010
B = 2011
C = 2012
D = 2013
E = 2014
F = 2015
G = 2016
H = 2017
J = 2018
K = 2019

From the above Table, we can decode the Year of Manufacture to be 2014.

Putting the two together I can decipher that the VIN corresponds to JAN-2014. clap:


Final Result

Thanks for reading my thread.

Car Neck Pillows

The next accessory I want to cover is the Neck Pillows from SpeedWav that I added recently to the car. These dumble shaped pillows add additional cushioning to the neck and can be added to the existing seats as an add-on easily:




Neck Cushion with the Elastic Band





Top View





Side View



Fitted onto the Driver Seat

I ordered these from ebay.in at Rs.299/- since the price at SnapDeal was higher than at Ebay.in and also i had a 7% OFF Discount voucher for ebay.in as well. These Neck Cushion Pillows can be ordered from the following URL on ebay: URL. They are easy to fit and can be mounted by pulling the elastic and putting it onto the seat and ensuring they fit between the Head Rest and the Seat.




Closer View




Side View From Close




Zoomed-In View




Thickness of Pillow




Side-Profile View

Overall I would give a rating of 4/5 for these pillows and these are truly value for money and add to the in-car comfort and experience for the driver and the front passenger. They can be easily removed and mounted back as well based on the preferences of people. Apart from comfort the neck-pillows also are supposed to add safety to the passengers in case of whiplash injuries.

I cannot yet comment on the durability of the pillows currently as these are still new but the quality seems to be up to the mark for the price paid and I would definitely recommend these for anyone who has neck pillows on their shopping list for car accessories. :thumbs up

Thanks for reading my thread.

Hi There !

Many congrats on your Honda City and welcome to the Honda Family !

I currently own an i-DTECH amaze and I'm planning on an upgrade to the Honda City i-DTECH. I was wondering how do you compare the noise levels of both the cars. From my test drive of the city, I felt the noise level to almost close, city being on the lower side though.

Thanks! And it has been a great ownership experience!

Between the Amaze and the City, the insulation levels on the City are definitely better. Also, another thing which I would like to add is that the i-DTEC engine on the City takes sometime getting used to. Driven at the right RPM (up to 2100 rpm) range I find that the engine noise is definitely negligible although the moment you start to rev the engine beyond this point and you do get the noise back. This maybe a similar behaviour on the Amaze as well but I cannot comment since I only did a test drive.

And this would come into play more so at higher speeds where due to the 6th gear the rpm can possibly maintained lower as compared to the Amaze and hence making the City a more silent vehicle.

But in the end the i-DTEC engine is what it is built to be, a light weight all aluminium engine with a focus on fuel efficiency so the noise levels are definitely high when compared with cars in the same class as the City such as the Verna.

If you are upgrading to the City, you have to consider the SV as a minimum variant and consider the V variant based on the specific needs in terms of accessories since some of these can be added as after market. Going for the V Variant reduces the hassle of finding and fitting accessories.

Hi vsrivatsa
Your thread has been extremely useful to me along with few other threads here in arriving at a decision to book the iDtec city VMT. I will be closely following all the postings here, to gain an insight into the various aspects of the car, that you and other friends are so generously providing.

And as usual the pictorial explanation is superb and easy to digest. Thanks a lot.

Glad you found it useful anilagdr. Will try to keep it updated as much as I can.

Just after I posted the details of decoding the VIN Details manually, fellow BHPian Amyth has posted an approach to do it using an online site which saves the effort of doing things manually :D

Here is the Website for the same: http://www.myvehicledetails.com/
Go to the website and enter the VIN Details and you are done, the details of the Car and Month and Year are all presented back at the click of a button!

I posted the same number on the website and got the below results:




Screenshot of the VIN Information Shown on the Website



This is a much easier and time saving approach to decode the VIN. Thanks to BHPian Amyth for sharing the same!

Saw your Vin posts now.
I had been using that website since few months to decode Vin. Very useful indeed.

And thanks for the neck pillow post. I was looking for something exactly like that as my current ones aren't good in cushioning.

Keep updating!

2014 Honda City - Another Pictorial

Had the chance to drive another 230 km of highway driving today. Took the Tumkur Road and did some good amount of highway driving. Some pictures from the drive today.

I must say Tumkur Road is awesome for a nice highway drive - I managed to keep the Car on Cruise control most of the time and kept the speed at around 80 kmph.

The initial 80 km yielded a whopping 26.7 kmpl as per the reading on the MID :D I guess the combination of Cruise Control, no gear shifts and the lower speed of 80 kmph ensured this type of mileage.




Mindblowing Fuel Efficiency



After the initial run on the highway, I did take a detour towards Siddarabetta which is hillock about 25 km from Tumkur. Took some nice photos of the car in the greenery. I will do the photos do the talking for the rest of this post.




City in the Wild




Side Profile Shot




Side Profile Shot from a distance




Side Profile - Closer



Rear Shot



More Rear Shots




More Rear Shots




Another Rear Shot





Rear Shot - Closer





Rear Shot, Up close




Parked at the Hotel for a quick snack




Average Fuel Efficiency at the End of the Trip




Shot from the Other Side


Thanks for reading my post. More coming soon.

Nice pictures and great FE figures those. How many occupants were there in the car? 80kmph is the most ideal speed for cruising. What is the engine rpm at that speed?

What an incredible FE you have achieved clap:clap:and how was your overall comfort with the cruise control ?
BTW you silver car looks magnificent in those surroundings.

Thanks AutoIndian! It was only me and my wife - so just 2 occupants for this drive and light luggage. The engine RPM is just over 1500, possibly 1550 at 80 kmph in the 6th Gear. The same speed on the 5th Gear would raise the RPM to about 1900. I would be heading for Second Free Service this week, the car has done about 4,200 kms so far.


Thanks anilagdr. Initially before the first Service, I struggled a lot with it and thought I was not working. Then after some helpful posts from other BHPians I understood the right way to activate it and now it seems easy to use. This feature is very effective and useful one for highways when the average speed of vehicles is over 60kmph and when you have multiple lanes.

Honda's Latest Comparison Report between Hyundai Verna and 4th Generation Honda City


































































Not sure how the calculations were made for the running cost but the graph looks interesting. :D

But overall a fair comparison except for the comment on aging design. I believe Honda themselves have adopted a bit of the Fluidic Design in terms of some of the lines on the new City.

It is also true that the Verna also has some edge as well that can be highlighted in reverse such as :

1. Disc Brakes for all four wheels
2. Reversing Sound Sensors
3. More powerful engine, better pick up (faster 0-100) etc.
4. Higher refinement levels in terms of NVH.
5. Stock Tyres and Alloys are better on the Verna SX (16 inch)
6. Height Adjustable Seat Belt

Touching the 4 months mark in a couple of days and the odo reading is at 4950 kms, should be crossing the 5000 kms milestone next week :Cheering:

Decided to provide the car with the under chassis coating from 3M. The Honda dealer was providing Waxoyl coating but given that its harder to inspect what gets done at the dealership I preferred a separate one from 3M.

3M Under Chassis Coating
The 3M Under Chassis Coating is offered in 2 plans. One is a 2 year plan and the other is 5 year plan. The 5 year plan has on offer a check up of the coating once every 6 months for the entire duration of 5 years and costs Rs.3809/- including taxes. This price was found to be consistent across all 3M dealerships in Bangalore.

I checked on 2 separate 3M Service Centers, one on Bull Temple Road and the other one in J P Nagar Phase-I. I decided to go for the J P Nagar Phase-I Center as it was more well established and been around for sometime and hence felt the folks there would have more experience. I wanted the work done on a weekend and hence called up on Friday and got an appointment for Saturday morning. The contact person assigned was Mr.Sunil.

I reached 3M Car Care at 9-25 AM in the morning and was saw that they were rolling up the shutters just then. Got the car in as the first in the queue for work to be done. The 3M Center itself is quite big and they have large hoardings of the services that they offer. I will let the pictures do some talking now:



3M Car Care Center @ JP Nagar Phase I




List of Services Offered




3M Wrap




3M Paint Protection Film




10% OFF Scheme if one chooses 3 Services at a time



City Parked inside the 3M Car Care Center





Steps to Level 1 which has a nice Customer Lounge




Customer Lounge with Billing Counter, TV etc

I must add that the Customer Lounge has glass windows and the work being done can be monitored from the Lounge itself as you have a full view of the rest of the Customer Care Center from the Lounge itself. The person at the Lounge offered tea which was brought in promptly in a while. They also had cans of some of the other 3M Products kept there for sale.

With the quick walk around the customer care center, next I will switch gears to cover on how work gets done here and the facilities available.

I met with Mr. Sunil who was the assigned person and he did an inspection of the car and put up a Job Card for the Under Chassis Coating. The time of delivery quoted was 12-00 Noon.

The car had to be washed first as a preparatory step before it is given the coating.



Wash Bay

The Center has a separate Wash Bay with pressure wash facilities that is clearly separated from the other areas. They also have curtains which prevent the spray from getting into other work happening in the Service Center.



Car Inside the Wash Bay Area




Under Body of the Car Being Washed




Under Chassis Wash




Under Chassis Wash - Thorough Job Done




Under Chassis Coating Bay




Under Chassis Coating Bay - Another View




City being Raised up in the Bay to get it ready for the Coating under the supervision of Mr Ashok

Thanks for reading my Post, more coming soon :thumbs up